Niall Horan gets funky on new track, 'Slow Hands'

Niall Horan has dropped a new song titled “Slow Hands,” the first he’s released since making his solo debut with “This Town” in 2016.

The One Direction member previously told EW his upcoming new album was inspired by classic rock acts including Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles. “Whenever I would pick up a guitar, I would always naturally play chords like that, and finger pick a lot and play that folky kind of style,” he said this past December.

He also described the collection as having a “folk-with-pop feel to it,” which is evident on “Slow Hands,” a bass-heavy track reminiscent of John Mayer that he intentionally took in a different direction from “This Town,” an acoustic ballad.

“I just thought, I’m missing a bit of grit, something a bit more funky, something with a bit heavier bass,” he told SiriusXM host Mikey Piff this week. “I was listening to a lot of late ’70s, early ’80s people, like Don Henley and stuff like that, and when he went solo in the early ’80s, he had this funky kind of feel to it — heavy bass, heavy guitar. So I just thought, ‘Let’s give this a crack.'”